Monday, June 29, 2015

The Rent Guidelines Board voted tonight at Cooper Union for a freeze on one-year leases for rent-stabilized apartments, "an unprecedented move in its 46-year history," The New York Timesreports. The board voted for a 2 percent increase for two-year leases.

For the 1.2 million New Yorkers who live in a rent-stabilized unit, this is what tonight's vote means for you:

• If you sign a one-year renewal on your lease between 10/1/2015 and 9/30/2016, your rent should not increase.
• If you sign a two-year renewal on your lease between 10/1/2015 and 9/30/2016, your rent should increase 2%.
• If you are facing any sort of harassment from your landlord, call 311 immediately and report it.

If I'm a landlord and the operating costs (e.g. property tax, water) of my building increase but I'm not able to increase rents, what is the expectation? I eat the difference? Figure something else out because I must be able to afford it? Serious questions.

Pinch, if you are a landlord that has not charged full market rate for the non stabilized apartments in your building. Or cut your one bedroom apts to make two or three for the "dorm" style apts as the majority of landlords in the EV has done. Then you should be interviewed as the only landlord in the EV with a moral bone in your body.Wake up and smell the greed. Finally a positive action for the working class of our city. The system has been out of whack because a Mayor finagled an extra term and gave too many favors to his real estate friends.

@Pinch - serious answer. Nobody knows because the landlords are quite, quite insistent about keeping their books closed. But profit on the buildings has to be figured after taxes, and they get to deduct not only business expenses, such as their property taxes and utilities and all the other costs they complain of, but also completely fictitious things such as depreciation. Traditionally at least, this is where the profit on a building comes from, which is why they like to buy and sell them so much rather than hang on them for very long periods of time.

I've survived a nearly a DOUBLE rent increase under Bloomberg so he could enrich his already bloated self and his cabal of cronies. Operating costs? You've got to be kidding. Under Bloomberg, the rents constantly went up but the building owner NEVER put any money into his building and NEVER made repairs. Oil costs have gone way down. Other expenses have flat-lined. Tax breaks abound. YOU GREEDY fucking landlords have made GOBS of money off of your "AFFORDABLE" housing for a decade; IT WAS HIGH TIME TO GIVE SOMETHING BACK TO THE WORKING CLASS PEOPLE OF THIS CITY FOR ONCE. YOU'RE ALL SO GOD DAMNED GREEDY...there's a special place reserved in hell for landlords.If you weren't making the cash, you'd all get out so there's PLENTY of $$$$$ for you blowhards; now shut the F*CK up. We're going to laugh at this celebration all f'ing year. RENT FREEZE!!!

Also, according to the RGB, as per GOTHAMIST: "Godsil gave a three-page spiel before she cast her vote for the freeze, rattling off statistics to explain her position. The board’s data, she said, indicated that landlords’ operating costs rose by only 0.5 percent last year, the lowest increase since 2002, and their net operating income before debt payments went up by 3.4 percent, the ninth year in a row it has increased. The board’s “commensurate” estimates indicated that owners could sustain that net operating income even with a rent reduction of 2 percent for a one-year lease and 1 percent for two years, at least with an increase of 0.75 percent for one year and 2 percent for two.

Landlords’ net operating income has increased by 34.4 percent since 1990 after adjusting for inflation, while homelessness rose by almost 10 percent in 2014. And over the last three years, rents have gone up almost five times as much as tenants’ incomes: With a median income of $41,500 a year and a median rent of $1,300 a month, half of the city’s 1 million rent-stabilized tenants now spend more than 36.4 percent of their income on rent."

So there, Pinch....even with a TWO PERCENT ROLLBACK IN RENT, LANDLORDS WOULD STILL MAKE A PROFIT THIS YEAR, so the freeze was well justified and overdue. But landlords just can't relate to the FACTS!

The amount o bile and venom expressed to property owners is amazing - by people who have no concept of what the realities are.

Yes, there are owners in the EV who have not made dorms out of their buildings and who do maintain and repair their buildings.

So when property taxes plus water taxes increase each year, and that added to insurance and fuel oil (even with a decrease in costs), maintenance and other costs (not talking about profit here) exceed an average $800 per month RS rent - what do you expect an owner to do?

And if your property is in a historic district and every DOB application must be reviewed by the LPC and include façade photos as well as architectural renderings (although the work is only INSIDE the building... then all such work increases costs significantly. So please add that in...

Reduce taxes? Lower spending? Never happen. Why do renters complain about a system that benefits them and only them? Yes freeze rents. But freeze taxes too. 'Dude Im anti construction and favor RS tenants never moving. I dont understand how its only rich people and bros who live here'. Stop. You benefit from the status quo. You dont want the system changes.

Over the past decade rent has increased again and again to keep up with costs. Then, all of a sudden gas prices fell through the floor five years ago, but did our rents go down in an equal fashion? no way. they still went up, and landlords have been pocketing that difference. stop your whining; you've been making out like bandits.

Rent stabilization is not public housing. RS involves no subsidies. No one's taxed to keep rents down, no one's forced to build or rent a RS apt.

This bullshit about subsidies and how rich RS tenants are wasn't part of the conversation until the 1990s when the real estate lobby hired PR firms to shovel it. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and just assume that you're ignorant.

Anon 9:56 Just curious how much do you pay in rent a month? Usually the ones that are the angriest are the ones that pay the least and then get upset that their neighbors are millenials, but you may be the exception.

According to RGB's own report owner's median income was $1,073 per unit while expenses were median $841. That is why Godsil rattled off stats but no numbers. The system profits only large landlords who own hundreds or thousands of apts. It used to be that immigrants became landlords to help themselves out of poverty (buy a building get a mortgage have a place to live with family and use rents to pay off mortgage.) How come no movement to #SaveNYCSmallLandlords ?

It doesnt fit the narrative. If you profiled a Dominican family in the Bronx who became landlords it wouldnt work. It has to be big Manhattan based real estate companies run by rich white guys. The problems of mom and pop landlords dont matter. You cant start screaming racism or bring up the 1% or the tale of two cities. I rented in Astoria from a Greek family who did this. But nobody cares about them. Too white, too ethnic, not a good story.

To anon @ 6:10, 7/1: I pay enough, no worries there. There are market-rate and RS in my building as well as RC (who pays $600). I pay about $1,700 (up from around $900 15+ years ago) and others here pay around that or likely a bit more (turnover has been higher in some units) so they were all nearing the former $2,500 threshold. But do I resent the elderly person who is rent-controlled? No, I do not. She is on a fixed income and the unit hasn't seen any repair love since the 1970s. My unit is a little better, but not by much. The point is that the landlords make out just fine in NYC — RC, RS or not. There is a mix in most older buildings. WHEN HAVE landlords EVER BEEN SATISFIED? That is the very definition of greed and they fit the description exactly. If it were bad business, they would sell. And I expect that will come too, at a tidy profit for them and a barrage of "ideas" for where I should move. In short, RENTERS WERE LONG OVERDUE A FAIR SHAKE for a change, and we finally got one under De Blasio. Oh, I'm angry because my LL harasses me all the time and he's a litigious creep, so rotund he looks like a classic 1930s Thomas Nast character, obese and bloated, rolling around on his carpets of cash. Met him once; once was enough.

Nope, just a scummy one bedroom, and barely...more like a improperly converted studio. And yes, it IS overpriced and overprized. Not such a nice deal, but all the rents in the tri-state are UP UP UP, so nowhere to go even if I wanted to.

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